


Stand it like a woman, and give some back

by corvidlesbian



Category: UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: (chicks voice) goodbye earl, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Moral Ambiguity, it's just a little kissing though, just a little kissing between women (no homo), lesbian Arabella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28190112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidlesbian/pseuds/corvidlesbian
Summary: In the aftermath of everything, Arabella considers what she wants, and what lengths she would go to get it.
Relationships: Miriam Landisman/Arabella Whitlock
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Stand it like a woman, and give some back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enkelimagnus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enkelimagnus/gifts).



> This premise definitely got away from me & became quite a bit darker than I originally intended. I hope you still enjoy it! Arabella being a closeted lesbian has been my headcanon for ages, and thanks to you, I finally got off my ass and wrote it. Happy yuletide!!

After everything, Arabella doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t know what she wants, but she doesn’t want to be thinking of her sister's corpse laid out in the street, or Clayton being dragged out of town for the bounty on his stupidly noble head. She doesn’t want to see her husband with a bottle in his hand. She doesn’t want to see Miriam cry anymore. That last one seems especially important.

Arabella has never allowed herself to want anything too much. Her wants mustn’t take precedence over everything else in her life. Her family must come first. Her honor must come first.

She had hoped she would never have to marry, but her sister’s death had changed fate’s plans for her. Arabella isn’t allowed to hope. She isn’t allowed to want. She isn’t allowed to look at Miriam the way she does, but she does anyway, because she can’t help it.

“Are you going to be okay, darling?” Miriam had said, before Arabella left her side.

“Yes,” Arabella had said, in an attempt to comfort her.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Miriam had said.

 _Yes,_ she thought, remembering Cynthia’s body in the dirt. _Yes,_ she thought, remembering Miriam’s hand on her shoulder. _Yes,_ she thought, remembering her husband’s hand on her- 

“No,” was her response, because there was nothing Miriam could do about these wants. A happy ending just wasn’t in the cards for her.

Now, Arabella picks up her skirts as she steps into the Gem Saloon alone. She can’t see Mr. Swearengen, wherever he may be. His assistant waves at her, and she’s unsure of how to react; an unaccompanied woman in a place like this raises eyebrows, and she doesn’t want to draw any more attention to herself.

She makes her way across the floor of the saloon toward him, glancing at the other patrons out of the corner of her eye. None seem to be staring. She supposes after everything that’s happened, she’s the least interesting.

“Mrs. Whitlock,” he greets her.

“Hi,” she says, forcing a smile onto her face. It’s faker than usual. How she hates that name- Whitlock- that reminder of all that she’s required to be. She would rather have stayed a Livingston forever.

“Are you here to talk with Al?”

Arabella opens her mouth to speak, but the only thing that comes out is a strangled breath. She tries again. “No,” she says.

She wants. She wants desperately, and she’s sure she’s terrible at hiding it. No use hiding it, anyway, not when he’s far too used to people coming in who want what she wants. His expression shifts. “Oh,” he says. “Shall I call the girls out?”

“No!” she says quickly, slightly too loud for where she’s standing. “No,” she says again, quieter. “I have need to be discreet.”

“I understand. That husband of yours, right?”

Arabella can feel her palms start to sweat. “What husband?” she says, showing him another one of those tense smiles.

“Of course, of course,” he says. “Uh, I think Katie’s pretty good with women. Do you want-”

He makes a move as if to shout up the stairs, and she grabs his arm tight. “Discreet,” she hisses, then immediately withdraws her hand. She brushes off her skirt. Composes herself. “As I said.”

What her husband would think if he could see her now. She counts her blessings that he’s a shut-in. There’s a good chance he doesn’t even know about the man they buried today. If he does know, she’s sure he doesn’t know they’re connected.

“Very well,” he says, unbothered by her lapse in control. “Upstairs, second door on the left.”

“Thank you,” she says graciously, as if she isn’t about to go upstairs and- and _fuck_ a _woman_. As if he doesn’t know it.

A woman of her status- of her _parentage_ \- it’s unthinkable. And yet, with all the insanity in this town, it almost feels natural. She had always been the good girl, by and large ignoring who she wanted to be. She had married Mr. Whitlock, for heaven's sake. And now she's throwing all of that to the wind.

She knocks softly on the door. Katie opens it slowly and gazes out at her. She's wearing a lovely robe, tied around the waist in a way that accentuates her figure nicely. The ribbon holding the outfit closed is tied loosely in a bow. It would take a single tug to pull it free. She only glances at it for a second. She doesn’t allow herself to imagine what that would be like.

"Arabella?" Katie says. "What do you need?"

Here's where Arabella can step away. She can pretend she has a question, or needs a friend. She can ask if Katie saw what happened down in the street, ask if she’s alright.

She doesn't. She stands silently in the doorway, and Katie understands. She steps back inside her room, permitting Arabella entrance.

“So.” Katie shuts the door behind her. “What is it you want?”

She’s not prepared to answer a question like that. She opens her mouth, as if some words will escape just by virtue of her lips being parted. They don’t.

Katie puts a hand on Arabella’s cheek. Strokes it. “Do you want me to touch you?”

Arabella closes her eyes against the sudden intensity of her feelings, and she nods.

“Is there something you’d like in particular?”

“I don’t know,” Arabella whispers.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t.”

“Would you like to kiss me?”

Arabella opens her eyes to look at Katie. She’s scared of what she’ll find, but she only finds understanding.

“You’ve been through a hell of a thing today,” Katie says. “Makes sense you want to find comfort in another woman.”

“Does it?”

“Does to me,” Katie said. “Would you like to kiss me, or will you be going home?”

Going home is the last thing Arabella wants. She leans forward to press their lips together: Katie’s lips are soft, and it’s nothing like the stubble around the mouth of her husband. Katie places a hand on her cheek, and that’s _right._ Arabella copies the movement, then reaches down to touch Katie’s neck. 

Kissing men never did anything for her. She always knew that, even before she’d realized what it meant. Kissing this woman doesn’t do a whole lot, but it’s nice anyway. It isn’t repulsive. 

She pulls away, instead trailing her lips over Katie’s jawline, her neck, her clavicle. The other woman’s skin is impossibly, addictingly soft. Arabella skates her fingers over Katie’s cheek. Katie lets out a quiet gasp, so quiet that Arabella wouldn’t hear it if Katie’s mouth weren’t right next to her ear. It sends a spike of heat between her legs, and she freezes.

Katie pulls away, puts her hand in Arabella’s, and tugs her down onto the bed. Arabella might as well be a statue. Her brain screams at her, although nothing articulate. Katie leans in again, and their lips meet, and Arabella is still stone.

“What’s the matter?” Katie says.

She hates how transparent she is. Her lips part, and nothing comes out. Her eyes leak. She wipes at them.

“Have you been with a woman before?”

She’s been with plenty of men, back when she thought that she was just broken and not fundamentally different than the other women. She had thought the solution of her frigidness would be fixed with the right set of hands. She had searched for a gentle man. She had never searched for a woman. She shakes her head: no.

Katie sits on the bed beside her, a hand on her shoulder. “Would you like to continue?”

What she would like is to turn back time. She’d like for the hands of the clock to rewind until she was back with her sister, playing games and making faces at the boys and not stuck in some inescapable situation, not stuck with a husband and the expectation of future children. She’d like this all to stop. She’d like to run away.

She had never before considered the possibility. 

“I’m married.”

“You’re not the first married woman I’ve seen. Do you love him?”

It’s easy to shake her head no. Love was never part of the deal. Even her parents wouldn’t fault her for that.

“Have you ever loved a man?” Katie asks.

She’d loved men. She loved her father, and she has cared so deeply for men that she (however briefly) believed that she wasn’t broken after all. It came to naught. It came to a business marriage and dreams of escape.

“Not in the way people expected me to.”

“Deadwood is a place for new beginnings,” Katie says. “Not for endings. Other places, women may have to follow what society says, but not here.”

“I can’t leave my husband.” Arabella’s hands clench into fists. Her mouth curves into a smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “My parents wouldn’t stand for it. Even in Deadwood, I’m trapped.”

Katie puts her hand on Arabella’s cheek and turns her face towards her. “Is he good to you?”

“He’s- not bad,” she says, but she’s stammering out the words. “He doesn’t hit me.”

Katie sighs. “Someday you have to learn what’s good and what’s the bare minimum. Does he control you? Does he expect a lot without giving in return, or get possessive when he sees you with other men?”

She stays silent. She remembers the cold grip of his hand around her wrist, one evening when she came home late before he had drunk himself to sleep. She remembers the fading yellow bracelet of bruises she had worn long sleeves to hide. He had never struck her, but that was not the only way to inflict pain. Had he been like this before Cynthia had died, or had she been trapped like this too?

Katie stands and moves to one of her drawers. She rifles through and pulls out a vial. “If you need some way to escape, use this.”

Arabella takes the proffered vial. “What is it?”

“Half of it will knock him out cold within a few minutes, and he’ll sleep for at least a day,” says Katie. “The full dose will knock him straight into a coma. Careful not to mix it with anything, because other substances tend to make it much stronger. Alcohol included.”

Arabella’s heart is cold, and so is the glass of the vial. She slips it into a pocket sewn into her skirt. Her husband is rarely sober, and so the liquid the vial contains is less useful to her. She’s still trapped. And what will a couple days bring her? A single woman possessing no personal fortune, no allies or friends, alone in a strange new town. Starting over. 

Unless.

She’s been written into her husband’s will, she knows that much. If she were the cause of his death, her life would be over, but he’s already been drinking himself half to death. 

No one would know it was her.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Do you want to stay here awhile longer?”

“I really must be getting back to my husband,” she says. “It’s getting late.”

And it is. If he’s still awake, he’ll be wondering where she’s been. If he’s unconscious, then she’ll be free to make herself something to eat and then slip into bed beside him.

She hates sleeping beside him. He snores.

Katie kisses her cheek. Her lips linger. Arabella ignores the shudder that goes down her spine, entirely pleasant, and stands. She brushes off her skirt, though it’s clean, so she has something to do with her hand. She combs her fingers through her hair, although it’s still neat as ever.

She leaves without ado. Most patrons downstairs are drunk and happy about it, and none of them pay her any mind. The oncoming night has a chill to it. She hurries home. Dusk nears, and the sky is grey with it.

Her husband is deep in the cups tonight. There’s a whole bottle of whiskey out, empty, left on its side on the floor. He has another in his hand. He’s senseless when Arabella enters their house and closes the door behind her. Senseless, but awake. 

“Where’ve you been?”

He only cares for the answer when he’s drunk. She’d removed all the bottles she could find last night, so he must have stashed some away somewhere. “With the Reverend,” she says, hoping he remembers that the church has been taken over again.

“Who?”

No luck. “The church is being renovated again- there’s a new reverend in town. He has required my assistance.”

“In what?”

“Religious matters.” She prays he not question further.

“Get over here.” His words are slurred together. He drops the bottle onto the floor. It doesn’t shatter, but it spills most of its contents before she can scoop it back up and place it right-side-up on the floorboards.

She realizes too late that she’s within grabbing distance, and scoots back just far enough that he only manages to brush his fingers against her skirt.

“Religious matters?”

She cringes. The smell of whiskey permeates the air. “Yes,” she says, smoothing her skirts. “Excuse me, I need to clean this up.”

Her hope is that he’ll have fallen asleep by the time she returns, and she can clean it up without a fuss. Mostly, she just wants to be out of the room. She can almost taste the whiskey on her tongue. She feels like she’s gagging on it.

She grabs a bucket and fills it with water, then adds soap. Slowly, methodically. In the other room, her husband shifts in his chair. There’s a brush, but the alcohol is wet so all she needs is rags. She’s done this before. It’s familiar. 

She reaches into her pocket and touches the vial. Nothing is sure, and she feels numb from uncertainty. Numbness makes her wait. She checks to make sure he’s sitting still before going back to the spill.

He turns his head slightly when she comes in: not quite asleep, but only cognizant enough to watch her. She rubs at the floor until she’s satisfied, and drops the rag back into the bucket.

“Do you want me to get you to bed?”

He grunts a negative. She fiddles with the wedding ring on her finger. Cynthia had worn it before her.

If she doesn’t get him into bed, he’ll stay out in the chair for the rest of the night. She’s glad to have an empty bed most nights, but tonight she stays awake. She sits on the made bed and waits until she hears him snoring.

The floorboards creak. Still fully clothed, she creeps through the house. It’s easy enough to pour the contents of the vial into his mouth, although he sputters for a moment, and it nearly makes her heart beat out of her chest. He swallows clumsily. She makes sure nothing drips out.

He won’t wake up again.

She can’t stay in an empty house with a dying man and her gnawing guilt. After knocking for several minutes, a half-awake Miriam opens her door, and Arabella collapses into her arms.

“What’s wrong?” Miriam asks, stroking her hair.

Arabella sobs. It would be easy to pass it off as emotions over the day, or her sister’s death; of the entire town being untrustworthy, over the business with Fogg and Clayton. She doesn’t want to. “I have sinned,” she says. “I’ve done something unforgivable.

“Seems like a problem for the Reverend.”

“He can’t know.”

Miriam is quiet. “Are you alright?”

“I will be.”

“Then I thank the good Lord and ask he forgive you. Come to bed, darling. You need your sleep.”

Arabella is too exhausted to complain. She doesn’t deserve forgiveness, she’s sure of it, but if Miriam doesn’t hate her then she can live with the fallout.

Miriam pulls Arabella’s arms off her midsection and takes her hand in her own. She presses a kiss to her forehead. Arabella allows herself to be led to the bedroom, to be pushed onto the mattress and have the sheets pulled over her shoulders. Miriam wiped the tears from the corner of Arabella’s eye.

“Don’t leave,” Arabella whispers. She’s afraid of speaking too loudly. She isn’t sure why.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Miriam tucks herself behind Arabella, wrapping an arm around her waist. It’s warm and heavy, and despite everything, she falls asleep with a lightness in her heart. 

If her life is to fall to pieces, let it fall in the morning. Let her have one night that’s entirely her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Afterward: Arabella gets away with it, becomes the town doctor, and has the Reverend marry her and Miriam. Gay rights
> 
> Also I think Fogg is halfway to where he can collect the bounty on Clayton and then goes "literally what the fuck did I just do" and they both go back to Deadwood. Isn't it great that everyone survived the events of canon :))


End file.
